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Email Marketing for Afterschool Programs

By Dan Forootan, President of EZ Publishing

Remember how you learned about afterschool programs during your childhood? The principal would announce the schedule of activities and the teacher would distribute the information and signup sheets. That was only the beginning of the paperwork associated with afterschool programs. After all, how else were parents and children going to remain informed about what extracurricular sports, theatre and music programs were being offered?

Today, though, there is a conscious effort by schools to cut down on the amount of paper they utilize, which makes keeping parents informed of afterschool activities a challenge. So how do schools address this situation? The answer is afterschool programs and email marketing campaigns!

Email marketing for afterschool programs makes all the sense in the world, financially and otherwise, for schools and district finances. The parents of today’s children remember a world without email, but grew up as email became a dominant force in our lives. They are far more accustomed to communicating via email than by any other method. There won’t be any transition period necessary as a school begins informing parents of afterschool activities with email marketing.

Along those lines, an afterschool program’s email marketing campaign is also a more effective way of informing parents about extracurricular activities. How many times does a piece of paperwork get lost between being handed to a student and the time he or she gets home? It happened a lot when you were a kid and it’s happening just as much today! In addition, the pace of everyday life makes it far more likely PARENTS will misplace forms from the school than a generation ago. But most adults are on the computer more often than not, so email marketing will provide constant reminders of what is going on with afterschool programs.

In addition, the email marketing software needed for afterschool programs to run email marketing campaigns doesn’t cost much to purchase, implement or execute—certainly far less than it costs to distribute information via the old-fashioned paper trail. With schools continually cutting budgets even in healthy economic times, it’s imperative to spend less on paper and redistribute that money elsewhere, both for the school district and for the environment. Investing in email marketing software will allow a district to take a giant step towards that goal.

An afterschool program’s email marketing campaign can be handled by anyone in the office with computer experience—no need to hire outside help for this task—and can easily be personalized as well. Make sure to include the contact information for the school as well as the contact person (coach, director, etc) for the activity. It’s also imperative to allow recipients to forward the message on to others. This will come in handy when parents want to inform other family members who might want to attend their child’s afterschool programs.

An afterschool program’s email marketing campaign would have seemed unimaginable when today’s educators were children, but the fast-paced nature of 21st century life coupled with the cost-effectiveness of email marketing software makes it the best way to keep parents in the loop about what’s going on at the school after hours. Email marketing software will solve multiples issues for schools – invest today!

Dan Forootan is the President of EZ Publishing. The firm specializes in helping businesses harness the power of the Internet for marketing and to automate business processes. In addition to custom web applications, EZ Publishing offers permission-based email marketing via StreamSend, a leading provider of easy, affordable and dependable email marketing software for creating, sending and tracking email newsletter and other campaigns.